AI names a home service company almost every time. Claude with live web search named at least one in 48 of our 50 questions (96%), with 5.0 per answer, and every plumbing, roofing, HVAC, pest, moving, handyman and carpet question got names. Cleaning was the exception: both hedges were cleaning questions.
The answers leaned on marketplaces. Thumbtack and HomeAdvisor were cited 61 times between them, and directories showed up in 40 of 50 answers. Companies with a local page for each city won the urgent questions: Roto-Rooter was named in all 6 emergency plumber questions. The lists were otherwise wide open: 91.3% of the 206 companies named appeared in only one answer.
What we asked
50 questions written the way US customers ask them. The 40 English questions were set in Charlotte, Denver, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, New York, San Antonio and San Diego (5 each), covering 10 services: house cleaning, deep cleaning prices, AC repair, HVAC, roofing, emergency plumbing, pest control, movers, handymen and carpet cleaning. They are tagged 16 specific, 8 compare, 8 urgent, 4 price and 4 trust. The 10 Spanish questions were set in Atlanta and Los Angeles (5 each), tagged "mixed". Six of them, word for word:
| Question | Language | Intent |
|---|---|---|
| Emergency plumber in Charlotte? | English | urgent |
| Most reliable roofing company in San Antonio? | English | compare |
| How much does deep cleaning cost in Denver and who is good? | English | price |
| Which handyman service in Houston has the best reviews? | English | trust |
| Mejor plomero de emergencia en Atlanta (best emergency plumber in Atlanta) | Spanish | mixed |
| Mejor compañía de control de plagas en Los Angeles (best pest control company in Los Angeles) | Spanish | mixed |
How often AI named a company
Claude named at least one company in 96% of home service answers, above the study average of 93.8%, and hedged on only 2 (4%). Nearly every name was a business: only 1.7% were individual people.
| Question type (English) | Questions | Named anyone | Companies per answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| HVAC for a new system | 4 | 4 of 4 | 8.8 |
| Most reliable roofing company | 4 | 4 of 4 | 7.0 |
| Carpet cleaning, pest control, movers | 12 | 12 of 12 | 5.3 to 5.8 |
| Emergency plumber, AC repair today | 8 | 8 of 8 | 3.5 to 4.0 |
| Handyman with the best reviews | 4 | 4 of 4 | 3.3 |
| House cleaning and deep cleaning prices | 8 | 6 of 8 | 2.7 |
| Spanish (all types) | 10 | 10 of 10 | 5.0 |
Cleaning is where the answers ran dry. The 8 English cleaning questions named 16 companies in total, against 5.4 per answer for every other English question. Both hedges were cleaning: "Best house cleaning service in Houston?", answered only from Thumbtack and Handy pages, and the Denver deep cleaning price question, where the answer noted that Angi's Denver cleaner page "currently shows 0 highly-rated local cleaners". In Charlotte, 8 of the 9 sources for the deep cleaning question were spam pages on code-hosting and wiki sites, and the answer told readers to treat its figures as rough estimates.
Urgent questions named fewer companies, but always named someone. All 4 AC repair answers said they could not confirm who could come today, then listed companies whose own pages advertised same-day or round-the-clock service.
Where the answers came from
Claude cited 459 sources for the 50 answers, 9.2 per answer, from 189 websites, sorted into the same nine types as the main study.
| Type of source | Home services (459) | All 10 industries (4,587) |
|---|---|---|
| Directories, marketplaces and "best of" list sites | 36.6% | 37.3% |
| Companies' own websites and other sites | 33.6% | 29.0% |
| Off-topic hosts (spam-style pages on unrelated sites) | 15.3% | 15.9% |
| Review platforms | 6.8% | 3.2% |
| News and media | 4.4% | 11.0% |
| Press releases | 2.8% | 1.2% |
| Government sites | 0.4% | 0.9% |
| Social media, forums and Wikipedia | 0.2% | 1.7% |
Companies' own sites carried more weight than average (33.6%), review platforms too (6.8%), and press releases reached 2.8%, the highest of our 10 industries. Each service had its own marketplace. The sites cited most:
| Site | Citations | Answers | What it is, and where it showed up |
|---|---|---|---|
| thumbtack.com | 31 | 13 | Marketplace; cleaning, carpet and Spanish answers |
| homeadvisor.com | 30 | 15 | Marketplace; most of all in roofing answers |
| orders.handy.com and handy.com | 13 and 12 | 5 and 6 | Booking platform; house cleaning and handyman answers |
| angi.com | 11 | 10 | Marketplace, spread across services |
| experience.com | 10 | 6 | Review platform; carpet, HVAC and cleaning answers |
| lugg.com | 10 | 3 | A moving service's own pages, cited for movers |
| rotorooter.com | 9 | 6 | A plumbing company's own local pages |
The spam layer: 70 sources from 53 unrelated websites, in 24 answers, and most of the sources in 4 of them. Described without naming the sites, which are often victims: code-hosting servers with commits titled "The Real Cost of Deep Cleaning in Charlotte: Worth It?", a university server in the Czech Republic, an arts centre's site with "average cost of house cleaning services in denver 2026", and free page builders carrying "Commercial Roofing Company NYC". The Charlotte answer called these "spammy copies of the same article on wiki and git sites".
Review sites were talked about more here than in any other industry, and still not read. 22 answers told people to check Yelp, 30 Google reviews or Maps and 12 the Better Business Bureau. None cited a Yelp or BBB page, and 2 cited a Google business page. In at least 34 answers Claude warned its sources were marketing, sponsored or low quality, also the most of any industry.
The companies named most often
The 50 answers named 206 different companies in 238 mentions, and 91.3% were named only once. The top five took 8.4% of mentions. Named most often in our answers:
| Company, as named | Answers (of 50) | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Roto-Rooter | 6 | Every emergency plumber question: Charlotte, Denver, Miami, San Diego, and Atlanta and Los Angeles in Spanish |
| Orkin | 5 | All 4 English roach questions, and Atlanta in Spanish |
| One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning | 3 | AC repair today: Charlotte, Denver, San Diego |
| Bulwark Exterminating | 3 | Pest control: San Antonio, Las Vegas, and Atlanta in Spanish |
| All My Sons Moving & Storage | 3 | Movers: Charlotte, Denver, Miami |
Each repeat name owned one kind of question, and three of them did it through their own local pages: Roto-Rooter's site was cited in all 4 English emergency plumber answers, One Hour's in all 4 English AC repair answers, and All My Sons' in 2 of its 3. The Charlotte answer quoted Roto-Rooter's page saying it "answers emergency plumbing calls in Charlotte 24/7, 365 days a year". Orkin was the exception: its own site was cited in only 1 of the 5 answers that named it.
Not a ranking. Counts from one assistant on one day, 21 October 2026, not our ranking or an endorsement. A company missing here may be excellent, and the lists change from day to day.
City by city
Each city had 5 questions: notes, not rankings.
| City | Named anyone | Per answer | Off-topic sources | Directory sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Las Vegas | 5 of 5 | 6.8 | 11.1% | 46.7% |
| San Antonio | 5 of 5 | 6.2 | 20.0% | 46.7% |
| Charlotte | 5 of 5 | 4.4 | 19.6% | 19.6% |
| New York and San Diego | 5 of 5 each | 4.0 | 17.0% | 44.7% and 23.4% |
| Miami | 5 of 5 | 3.6 | 13.3% | 40.0% |
| Houston | 4 of 5 | 5.8 | 0.0% | 71.7% |
| Denver | 4 of 5 | 5.0 | 6.5% | 28.3% |
| Atlanta and Los Angeles (Spanish) | 5 of 5 each | 4.4 and 5.6 | 21.7% and 26.1% | 26.1% and 19.6% |
- Houston: no spam at all, but 71.7% directories. The house cleaning answer was built only from Thumbtack and Handy, and named no one.
- Denver: a same-name slip. The carpet cleaning answer's sources included a carpet cleaner's page for Denver, North Carolina. The answer flagged it, but that company still appears in its list.
What the Spanish questions showed
| English (40) | Spanish (10) | |
|---|---|---|
| Answers naming at least one company | 95% | 100% |
| Companies per answer, when any | 5.0 | 5.0 |
| Hedged | 5% | 0% |
| Sources with a "best" or "top" style title | 12.3% | 21.7% |
Spanish answers named companies every time, but from English pages. Only 11 of their 92 sources (12.0%) were Spanish pages, half the study's 23.8% across all Spanish answers, and 5 of the 10 answers cited any. Most were Trustpilot's Spanish pages and a home services marketplace in Spain. Off-topic hosts were 23.9% of Spanish sources.
Los Angeles shares its name with places abroad, and it showed. The Spanish AC repair answer picked up pages for a Los Angeles district in Murcia, Spain, and set them aside. The Spanish pest control answer opened with a warning that a Rentokil page was for Los Angeles in Chile, then still listed Rentokil.
Three real answers
Best house cleaning service in Houston?
The search didn't identify a single "best" Houston cleaning company. It returned marketplaces and guides instead, so the answer depends on what you need.
Emergency plumber in Charlotte?
I found several Charlotte emergency plumbing providers, though most of the sources are company marketing pages, so I haven't verified their claims.
Mejor compañía de control de plagas en Los Angeles
Una aclaración importante: la primera página de Rentokil corresponde a la ciudad de Los Ángeles en Chile, no a California.
What a home service business should do
- Complete your Thumbtack, HomeAdvisor and Angi profiles. They were the most cited sites, and answers quoted what they show: ratings, review counts and price ranges. Roofers, HomeAdvisor first; cleaners, Thumbtack and Handy; handymen, Handy and TaskRabbit.
- Build your review platform profiles. Review platforms were 6.8% of sources, double the study average. Carpet, HVAC and cleaning answers quoted ratings from Experience.com, and pest and HVAC answers from ConsumerAffairs.
- Publish one page per service and city. "Emergency plumber in Charlotte, North Carolina", with 24/7 hours, the local phone number, the area you cover and how fast you arrive. That is how Roto-Rooter was named in all 6 emergency plumber questions.
- Put prices on the page. A deep clean by home size, an AC diagnostic fee, a move by bedrooms. Cleaning answers fell back on marketplaces and copied price pages, and named few local companies.
- Write the city and state, every time. Denver, North Carolina and Los Angeles, Chile both got into our answers. "Los Angeles, California" on the page costs nothing.
- If you serve Spanish speakers, write Spanish pages. One page per main service, such as "plomero de emergencia en Atlanta, Georgia", with hours and phone. Only 11 of 92 Spanish sources were Spanish pages.
- Keep Google, Yelp and BBB healthy anyway. Home service answers sent people to check them more than any other industry did.
- Measure the same questions monthly on ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, with dated screenshots.
What we'd do for you, and what we don't promise
We do this work for US home service businesses, remotely from Dubai, with traditional SEO included and ChatGPT and Gemini (Google AI) tracked on every plan. It starts with a free AI check: 10 real customer questions and the companies AI names instead of you. The AI Visibility Audit (30 questions, 4 AI tools, 3 competitors, screenshots and a 90-day plan) is USD 549. Monthly plans are USD 1,249 (Foundation), USD 2,349 (Growth) and USD 4,399 (Authority), month to month, with no lock-in and no setup fee. Details at adjoltz.com/us.
In the first 30 days of any plan, if AI does not name you for at least 3 commercial questions on the list you approved, or you are unhappy for any other reason, we refund 100% of what you paid, in cash, within 7 working days (guarantee rules). We don't promise a top spot on any assistant, rankings, paid places on "best of" lists, job numbers, or a US office. We do not have one.
Method and limits. 50 home service questions from our 500-question US AI visibility study 2026, each sent once, word for word, to Claude with Anthropic's live web search tool on 21 October 2026, between 21:31 and 23:12 UTC. Source types were coded by us with hand-checked lists, so the off-topic share is a floor, and simple name matching may make the "named once" share slightly high. One assistant, one day, one run: Pew Research Center found 44% of US adults use ChatGPT and 6% use Claude. We did not check that every named company is licensed or operating. Every question and its numbers: study data (CSV).